Description and Critique of School Choice Programs

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act of 2001 has been criticized for making many promises and mandates to increase the progress of American schoolchildren, while failing to act realistically towards disadvantaged students. One part of NCLB is school choice, which is not a novel idea in this country. Elite families have always desired the best education for their children, which in their minds sometimes meant avoiding other cultures, races or religions, while for others it was attending the best funded schools. For example, Irish immigrants sent their children to Catholic schools to evade Protestants, and white Southerners attended private schools that did not accept former slaves (Glass, 2001, p. 4). Today, the federal government has given students the opportunity to transfer from public schools they believe are not providing them with a proper education to other public, charter, or magnet schools.

According to United States Department of Education, the School Choice program supports states and school districts in establishing and expanding public school choice programs. The Department gives monetary awards to state and local education agencies to improve their schools. To distribute these funds the Department examines the applications of educational agencies to determine which would provide the widest variety of choices to students, have the greatest opportunities for students in low-performing schools to attend higher-performing schools, and implement an interdistrict option for more public school choice ("Program Description", 2005, p. 1). Beyond escaping ineffective instruction, students are also offered school choice when their current facility is deemed unsafe ("Unsafe Schools Choice Option," 2005, p. 1).